Thursday, May 24, 2012

Back to Blog

I haven't blogged in months. Normally, when someone returns to blogging after a long absence, they open with a post explaining where they've been, and what wonderful or terrible life experiences have prevented them from blogging for so long, their new puppy who ate their laptop power cable, or the people who hacked their Facebook account and changed their profile picture to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, or the fact that their local muffin shop shut down their free wifi or blah blah blah. Then they'll promise to never leave their beloved readers again.
I'm not doing that. It's trite and clichéd, and really, I doubt any of you care. This isn't group therapy. Instead, here's a short piece of flash fiction I wrote for a writing class a few months ago. It probabaly needs another redraft, but I read it at an open mic, and nobody openly told me it was shit, so I now assume it's amazing. Regular blogging will resume next monday, twice a week.

Footing The Bill

‘I just want you to know David, that it’s not you, it’s me’

She looked up from her drink and sighed, looking me in the
eye for the first time in the whole half hour that we had been sat there.

‘No, I’m sorry, that’s not fair of me. We promised that we’d
always be honest with each other, and I owe you that. It is you.’

I choked slightly on a mouthful of sandwich I struggled to
swallow, and tried to come up with something, anything to say in reply.

‘I... but... What? Me? What?’

She sighed again, more heavily this time.

‘Don’t get me wrong darling, (Should I still call you
darling? Probably not, I suppose); don’t get me wrong David, it’s not anything
that you’ve done. It’s just that, well, I suppose you bore me.’

‘I... I bore you?’

‘Oh now! Don’t say it like that! You know that I’m not
trying to be hurtful. Perhaps “bore” is too strong a word. I just need someone a bit more... on my level.
And it’s not like we didn’t have some fun times. Didn’t we have fun?’

She picked the last crisp from the side of her plate and
nibbled at it daintily.

‘I’m... not on your level?’

‘I mean, we always had fun when we were out with my friends,
didn’t we? Your friends can be a little... Is boorish the word I’m looking for?
Certainly those rugby boys would class as boorish, with their drinking songs
shouting and hollering.’

‘So, I’m boring and not on your level and you hate my
friends as well?’

She sighed again. Her sighing at me seemed to sum up the
entirety of our relationship really. ‘Oh now! Don’t go twisting things. I just
think that we’d be better off as friends. You can see that, can’t you? Of
course you can.’

She stood up. ‘Look, I have to go. I’m meeting Daniel, you
remember Daniel from my office? I’m meeting him to go to the opening of an art
exhibition in the library. It’s called “She
Broke My Heart So I Ate Her Liver”. It sounds fascinating! Daniel is very into art!’

About Me

Silas Meek isn't real, but if he were, he'd probably wear a top hat and fingerless gloves, like an upper class tramp or a hobo king. He enjoys a good cup of tea, combing his beard, Mario Kart,books about zombies, and post-it notes. His favourite weather is snow.